The Winter Olympics in Beijing are nearly here—but you’d barely know it based on advertising activity. Sponsors are dealing with a range of challenges, from geopolitical issues to a complicated marketing calendar. So several big brands are opting to sit out the games altogether, while others are only now ramping up marketing for an event that typically draws ad activity many weeks in advance.

Part of this is timing: Along with pandemic-related restrictions on guests and events, this Winter Olympics—which hit full stride with Friday’s Opening Ceremony on NBC—coincides with the Super Bowl season and also comes only about six months after the Tokyo Summer Olympics that were delayed due to COVID-19. That has caused a “Tokyo hangover,” says Basia Wojcik, sports VP at Omnicom-owned agency The Marketing Arm.

But a bigger issue for brands is dealing with geopolitics, namely rising tensions between China and the West. Companies are under pressure to react to China’s treatment of Uyghur people in Xinjiang, which Western countries and activists have called genocide. Uyghur people are reported to have been persecuted through methods such as detention and re-education camps, accusations that China denies. Activists have called upon the U.S. government and companies to boycott the Olympics ever since China was announced as the Winter host in 2015. This mistrust extends to cybersecurity: A range of Western countries have warned athletes of surveillance threats and U.S. athletes were advised by the FBI to use burner phones.

The situation has led some brands sponsors to remain silent; Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble are among the multinational companies that have not publicly commented on their plans, although Coke is expected to forgo a global campaign.

Consumers appear to want more: 58% of U.S. adults said they would support companies that pull out of the Games given China’s human rights record, according to a Morning Consult poll released this week. Short of ending their pricey deals with the International Olympic Committee, sponsors would still gain the support of 55% of poll respondents by “simply releasing a public statement,” according to the poll.

But for activists, anything short of pulling financial support is not enough, according to human rights activist Teng Biao, a lawyer who has worked on cases involving Uyghur and co-founded two human rights NGOs when he was in Beijing. “What the Chinese government wants from the Olympic games is the endorsement from other companies,” said Biao, now a Pozen Visiting Scholar at the University of Chicago. “To go to Beijing, to support the games financially, is an endorsement.” 

Corporations have been reluctant to take a stand. They are “being asked to play a political role that they’re not happy to play,” said Dali Yang, a professor at the University of Chicago whose research includes China’s political economy. While the sponsors are international brands that don’t necessarily have an outsized stake in Xinjiang, they also don’t want to alienate a big market–China.

The U.S. government has acted, announcing a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics at the end of 2021; although American athletes themselves are free to attend, there will be no official U.S. representation. This sentiment has permeated the West, including Britain, Australia and Canada among countries that announced diplomatic boycotts. Other countries such as New Zealand and Austria, according to Politico, have said that they're not sending representation for COVID-19 reasons.

According to Jim Andrews, founder and CEO at A-Mark Partnership strategies, concentrating on athletes is the best move for sponsors since companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in their sponsorship deals. Andrews, who has consulted with Olympics sponsors in the past, noted that the lack of publicity from companies before the games could be because companies are holding on until athletes’ stories develop and then will “piggyback” on those.

He added that the choice to stay silent or focus on athletes also depends on whether the brand already had established relationships with athletes. “To do these things well you have to have planned them in advance,” he said, otherwise “it’s a little bit difficult to flip the switch.”

Procter & Gamble’s silence is particularly notable, given the company’s history of running heartstring-pulling Olympics ads. The company normally amps up its Olympics marketing more than three months before the Games. While Coke is forgoing a global campaign it is expected to engage in local marketing activities in China. Visa, another sponsor known for big Olympics efforts, did not respond to a request for comment on its plans.

Airbnb, an Olympic sponsor, also declined to comment on its plans. The travel brand was among the first companies targeted by activists. Some lawmakers have also pressured the company in the wake of a critical November report by Axios.The report alleged the brand rented properties in Xinjiang on land controlled by a group the U.S. government has connected to genocide.

Also declining to comment is Intel, whose Olympics sponsorship began in 2018. The company has come under heat before for taking a stance on Xinjiang: when the U.S. passed a law in July last year banning imports from Xinjiang, Intel was heavily criticized on Chinese social media after testifying before Congress that it did not source from Xinjiang, where there have been allegations of forced Uyghur labor. The company apologized to China late last year and was also found to have deleted references to Xinjiang in the letter it sent to its suppliers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

NBC, which broadcasts the Games in the U.S., acknowledged geopolitical issues in a press conference held Jan. 19, while pressing an argument for brands to continue to spend on the Olympics.

“When our advertisers decide to sit these Games out, it really hurts the athletes, because now they have to go compete with the Chinese and the Russians and athletes from other countries that already receive massive state funding,” said NBC’s Sports-Advertising Chief Dan Lovinger.   

NBC representatives have not provided a detailed update on ad sales since telling reporters on Jan.19 that the pace of ad sales matched what it achieved heading into the PyeongChang Winter Olympics four years ago.

Salesforce, Toyota among those jumping in 

Other sponsors are moving forward with their Olympics campaigns, although many of them have only recently publicized their efforts. 

For instance, Salesforce debuted its campaign Thursday, but it is mostly devoid of Olympic imagery. A sponsor of Team USA, the brand’s ad focuses on the company’s campaign “TeamEarth” and features actor Matthew McConaughey as an astronaut emphasizing the importance of protecting the earth rather than focusing on “new frontiers” such as space or the metaverse. The ad aims to focus on a moment that is broader than the Olympics, according to brand representatives, and to engage with a wide global audience through the Olympics. At the end of last year, the software company announced a partnership with Alibaba Cloud to create Salesforce Social Commerce, an e-commerce product to allow international businesses to grow in China.  

Toyota, which is also a sponsor, plans to run a campaign in the U.S. featuring global Team Toyota athletes and some Toyota products, according to a representative. Delta Air Lines, which is the “official airline of Team USA,” will run five TV ads that focus on athletes and everyday people, according to a press release.

Samsung, another sponsor, has created a spot that includes the Olympic rings and is similar to the Salesforce campaign in that it references environmental work. 

Jeremy Carey, managing director of Omnicom-owned sports agency Optimum Sports, framed focusing on athletes and their journey as the “one commonality” between what the Olympic sponsors aim to do. “The spirit of the games is still in support of the athletes,” said Carey, despite the politics often involved in every Olympics.

This careful focus on athletes is due to fear of upsetting either North American or Chinese markets with a statement, said Dae Hee Kwak, an associate professor at the University of Michigan focusing on sports marketing research.

“You’re dealing with two large markets where they have different interpretations of what’s going on in Xinjiang,” said Kwak, noting that in China, information about Xinjiang is much less readily available. 

In a typical Olympics year, brands that don’t pay for official sponsorships try to feed off the games with deft marketing that avoids the use of official trademarkers but still makes references to the event.  But Kwak questions if that is a wise move this year. That would be “almost like shooting yourself in the foot – the sponsors aren’t doing anything, why would you do anything?” he said.